The Comtesse de Fiesque died very aged, while the Court was at Fontainebleau this year.  She had passed her life with the most frivolous of the great world.  Two incidents amongst a thousand will characterise her.  She was very straitened in means, because she had frittered away all her substance, or allowed herself to be pillaged by her business people.  When those beautiful mirrors were first introduced she obtained one, although they were then very dear and very rare.  “Ah, Countess!” said her friends, “where did you find that?”

“Oh!” replied she, “I had a miserable piece of land, which only yielded me corn; I have sold it, and I have this mirror instead.  Is not this excellent?  Who would hesitate between corn and this beautiful mirror?”

On another occasion she harangued with her son, who was as poor as a rat, for the purpose of persuading him to make a good match and thus enrich himself.  Her son, who had no desire to marry, allowed her to talk on, and pretended to listen to her reasons:  She was delighted—­entered into a description of the wife she destined for him, painting her as young, rich, an only child, beautiful, well-educated, and with parents who would be delighted to agree to the marriage.  When she had finished, he pressed her for the name of this charming and desirable person.  The Countess said she was the daughter of Jacquier, a man well known to everybody, and who had been a contractor of provisions to the armies of M. de Turenne.  Upon this, her son burst out into a hearty laugh, and she in anger demanded why he did so and what he found so ridiculous in the match.

The truth was, Jacquier had no children, as the Countess soon remembered.  At which she said it was a great pity, since no marriage would have better suited all parties.  She was full of such oddities, which she persisted in for some time with anger, but at which she was the first to laugh.  People said of her that she had never been more than eighteen years old.  The memoirs of Mademoiselle paint her well.  She lived with Mademoiselle, and passed all her life in quarrels about trifles.

It was immediately after leaving Fontainebleau that the marriage between the Duc and Duchesse de Bourgogne was consummated.  It was upon this occasion that the King named four gentlemen to wait upon the Duke,—­ four who in truth could not have been more badly chosen.  One of them, Gamaches, was a gossip; who never knew what he was doing or saying—­ who knew nothing of the world, or the Court, or of war, although he had always been in the army.  D’O was another; but of him I have spoken.  Cheverny was the third, and Saumery the fourth.  Saumery had been raised out of obscurity by M. de Beauvilliers.  Never was man so intriguing, so truckling, so mean, so boastful, so ambitious, so intent upon fortune, and all this without disguise, without veil, without shame!  Saumery had been wounded, and no man ever made so much of such a mishap.  I used to say of him